


Moving On (To You)

by TheBritishGovernment



Category: The Pinkertons (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9602048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBritishGovernment/pseuds/TheBritishGovernment
Summary: In a world where SoulMate's names are written on your wrist love can be tricky for those who have lost their SoulMates, and even trickier for those who have no SoulMate at all.





	

Kate didn’t allow herself to think about her husband often. Never during the day, never when she had company, and most definitely never when she was working. 

Whenever she did it was always with a mix of pain and nostalgia that washed over her so completely that it often left her in a haze for days. A haze that she was lost in when Will leaned across the table, looked closely at her and all but yelled her name.

Kate’s head snapped to look at him, her eyes coming away from the window of the saloon. “What?”

“I asked what was going on with you today. Have a little too much fun last night?” he asked with a playful grin.

Kate only glared and huffed at him in response.

“Fine, don’t tell me what has you staring out the window like someone out of those terrible novels you read.”

A smirk spread across Kate’s face. “And how would you know what happens in my _terrible_ novels?”

Will shifted in his seat and his eyes looked at anything but Kate before shrugging. “Sometimes you take a long time to change. I get bored.”

Kate’s wicked grin didn’t fade. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I pick one up.” Even as she mocked him she considered the fact that sometimes she did have to change into a disguise after meeting with her partner and it did take quite a while to become someone else. She made a note to look for something Will might enjoy better than her guilty pleasure, SoulMate novels.

As soon as her focus faded away from the conversation the fog returned. She ran her thumb gently over the left wrist where her husband’s name had been scrawled when he had been alive. The feeling of the fading scarred skin was almost a comfort after all these years. It helped to settle the fog in her mind. 

She knew it was a tell and despite years of trying to banish the habit, she hadn’t been able to do any better than control when the haze came, and with it the need to feel his name on her skin. Kate never knew if Will noticed when she did it. He didn’t have a SoulMark and by extension, no SoulMate. She had searched his wrists and forearms during the times that she had seen him shirtless. A number that was slowly growing the longer they were partnered.

He didn’t have the stark scar tissue name. There weren’t a lot of Pinkerton agents who had Soul Mates who were still alive, it was just too hard on their minds and bodies to be far away from their SoulMates as was required of Pinkertons. The thing was that he didn’t even have the faded version that Kate bore. It was just blank, bare skin.

“Excuse me, ma’am, sir,” a small voice said behind Kate. She turned to see a little girl, no older than eight years old, holding her clenched fists close to her chest, her face the picture of determination. “Are you the Pinkertons?”

Will got a grin on his face and nodded. He kicked a chair out for her to sit and introduced them. “Will Pinkerton and Kate Warne at your service, little lady.”

“I can’t find my mother and I’d like to hire you to find her,” the girl said in a tumble of words. She opened her fists over the table and coins clattered on the surface; the palms of her hands had a cluster of half circles from clutching the money for too long. 

Will and Kate locked gazes for a moment, each with a grin. “We’ll take the job,” Kate answered, looking back at the girl. “Though it looks like you have a little too much there.” She scanned over the coins and picked up the smallest coin. “I think this will do. What do you think, Will?”

“That’s closer to what I was thinking.”

The three of them left the Dubois and headed to the market when Will asked. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

“Last night,” she answered plainly, as if it should have been obvious.

Will and Kate a both stopped in their tracks. “You haven’t seen your mother since last night?” Kate asked, kneeling down in front of the girl to be at eye level.

“She left the farm just before dusk, said she had to come to town to pick something up from my Uncle. He’s a lawyer in town.” It was almost noon, which meant that her mother hadn’t been gone a full day yet, but it also meant that this was not a little girl who had lost her mother while shopping.

“Your mother left you alone?” Will asked.

“I have two older brothers and one younger.”

“So you left them all at home?” Kate asked. “Won’t they be worried about you?”

“They weren’t worried about mother.”

Will opened his mouth to explain that their mother leaving on her own was different than their little sister disappearing to go looking for her. Instead a shout from across the street rang out. The small group looked up to see two boys come riding down the street, each with a wild and panicked look in their eyes.

“Clarissa,” the older one shouted again when he saw the Pinkertons and the little girl.

Clarissa saw them, and then turned away with her arms crossed and her nose in the air. 

Both boys dismounted, one of them while the horse was still coming to a stop and then kneeled in front of Clarissa, turning her around to face him. “You can’t just run off like that.”

“You weren’t worried about Mother, why should you be worried about me?” she shot at him. 

Exhaustion and something a lot like disappointment covered his face as he spoke. “She will come back when she is ready. Not before.”

“She can’t come back if she’s in trouble.”

“Clarissa,” Kate interrupted. “You should go with your brothers.”

“I hired you to find my mother,” Clarissa said with a cross between outright defiance and hurt. “You haven’t done that yet.”

“You should trust your brothers that she will be home soon,” Will said. Kate was too busy fighting the feeling that she had failed this little girl.

“She wouldn’t have just left us! She promised she’d be back by morning!”

The older boy rubbed at him face and sighed. “She will come home, you needn’t worry about that. Got it?” he said in a tone that was surprisingly harsh for how gentle the look in his eye was. 

When Clarissa stayed silent, only glaring at her brother, he stood up to full height and looked at Kate and Will. “You two the Pinkertons?” Will and Kate nodded; he continued. “Whatever she promised you is off. Thank you for looking after her till we could fetch her, but we don’t need your kind of work.” 

Both agents agreed and said that it was no trouble at all. 

“I’m Jonathan Melton, by the way. If she gives you any more trouble our farm is about five miles east of town. We’d be much obliged if you could bring her back should she come to find you again.”

* * *

Will didn’t think about love often, but when he did it was usually in relation to whiskey or Annalee’s stew, both of which Kate had interrupted during their lunch that had passed almost completely in companionable silence.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that their mother left in the middle of the night to go see their uncle?”

For a second Will considered it. “Not really.” He went back to his stew in hopes that Kate would let it go after that. After all this time he supposed that he should have known better. That was when Kate leveled him with the Look and he knew all hope of enjoying his lunch while it was still warm was gone. Kate was going to demand all of his attention for when she convinced him to take this case for free. He tried to beat her to the punch. “Their uncle is a lawyer, she probably just needed some advice and he didn’t want her to interrupt his normal work so he had her come later after he was done with other clients.”

“Then why wouldn’t she have just waited until a day off?” Kate asked. Annalee was passing then and Kate stopped her. “Have you ever heard of a lawyer with the last name Melton?” 

“We don’t even know if that’s his name,” Will argued with a halfhearted sigh.

“I know him. Likes to pay cards here every once in a while. Tips well. Why? He do something?”

Kate gave Will a triumphant smile then turned back to Annalee. “We don’t think so. His niece was in here looking for her mother.”

“He’s got an office a few blocks west of here on Wabask,” Annalee offered. “That’s where I’d start.” With that she turned around and went back to the bar.

“I think I’m going to go or a stroll, would you care to join me?”

“Can’t we have just a few days off?”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” she said as she stood up from the table and started to walk away. He knew she didn’t mean that, but he still just watched her go.

There was a part of him that just didn’t want to get up yet, but there was another part, not an insignificant one, though mostly silent, that just enjoyed watching her and the only time he was allowed to do that was when she was walking away and not looking at him. She was too observant the rest of the time. 

Will didn’t have a SoulMate, and sometimes he wondered if the myths and legends were true. Mostly that rumor was that people without the Mark couldn’t love at all, but Will preferred the other legend, the one that said that people without SoulMates could and would fall in love with everyone. That made more sense to him because he might not have been ready to call the feeling when he looked at Kate love, but it wasn’t just friendship anymore.

Her head popped back over the doors as she leaned back in to look at him. “Are you coming or what?”

He hid his pleased smile at being right and grabbed his hat off the chair.

It wasn’t a long walk but for once Will got to be the one to shoot down the conspiracy theories and it was nice to stretch his legs after waiting for a case, not that he would admit that to Kate. 

Then they arrived to the office the sign was flipped to show that they were still closed. Will tried to door anyway and it swung open. A bad feeling had taken root in Will’s gut and Kate had the same feeling from the way she looked at him. She stepped into the front room, Will in tow, his hand resting on his gun.

“Mr. Melton?” No answer. Kate walked into a side office and saw two feet sticking out from behind the desk. She rushed to the man’s side and Will checked the rest of the office, hoping for a sign of the attacker.

“Will,” Kate called and from where she kneeled next to Arthur Melton she said to Will, “He’s dead.”

* * *

“Why, when there’s a body, you two are always the ones who find it?” Logan asked with a shake of his head.

“Honestly, Sheriff, I wish someone else would find the body. Maybe then I could have a real day off.”

“His throat was cut and he bled out almost instantly,” Kate proclaimed, examining the blood on the walls. 

“Thank you for the insight, Mrs. Warne,” Logan said, forcing a laugh from Will who only shrugged when Kate shot a glare at them.

“He’s been dead less than a day, but longer than 12 hours for certain. The person who did the cutting seems to be about on par in hight to our victim, though they might have been a little taller. And strong.”

“What about the knife?” Will asked.

Kate held up a dull brass-gilded letter opener that was covered in blood. 

“Looks like we need to pay a visit to those kids after all,” Will said. 

“And the sooner the better. Their mother might actually be in danger.”

They left Logan with the crime scene and started out to the Melton farm. During the ride Will couldn’t stop himself from wondering why the mother had gone to the office in the middle of the night. Kate was right; it was odd. There were few people in the world that he would go to see in the middle of the night without a damn good reason, and almost all of them were back in Chicago. There were even fewer people who would open the door after he arrived. Sometimes he wondered if Kate was one of them.

When they arrived at the Melton farm there wasn’t a soul in sight and no one came to the door when they knocked on the farmhouse door.

“I’ll check the barn,” Will said nodding to the large building to the side of the house.

“I’ll see if the back door is open.” They turned around to walk off the porch to find Jonathan Melton standing with his head cocked and his arms crossed.

“We’re not paying you for helping Clarissa earlier, so what are you doing here?”

“Jonathan, I’m afraid we have some bad new,” Kate started. In the split second before Kate could continue Jonathan’s face dropped and flashed fear, pain, shock and disbelief until he looked like the child he was.

“It’s your uncle” Will said quickly, Kate’s dramatic pause had taken almost as much of a toll on him as it had Jonathan.

The boy took a gasping breath and steadied, putting back the façade of the man of the house. “What happened?”

“Maybe we should go in?”

He nodded then and led them into the house. “Harry and the others are out in the barn right now. Would you like some coffee?”

Jonathan made them all large cups of strong coffee and only when they were all seated at the table did Will and Kate explain everything they knew, including that there had been no trace of their mother anywhere.

“You don’t have any idea who did it?”

“No, do you have any idea who might want your uncle dead?” Will asked. 

A sour look passed over Jonathan’s face. “He and I weren’t close. But he was a lawyer so I doubt that there was a shortage of people with a bone to pick.”

“Why weren’t you two close?” Kate asked.

“After my father died he wanted to come in and make us his family. Made a big show out of some will. That didn’t sit right with me. It was his brother after all.” His nose wrinkled and his lips curled like he had bit into a lemon. “Would you do me a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“My uncle has a cabin west of town. Off the main road by about half an hour ride and near a creek over there. That’s where my mother is, I’m sure of it. We don’t have much in the way of money, but Clarissa is going to need her and I’m willing to work for your help.”

“We’ll go to your uncle’s cabin.”

“Thank you.” He even looked like he meant that.

It wasn’t long after that that Kate and Will left and walked back to the gate. “A lawyer’s will could do the family some good. Their mother is the obvious suspect,” Kate said quietly as they walked.

“Yeah, but did you see him when he was talking about Arthur? He hated him.” They both turned around to see Jonathan standing on the porch watching them. 

“We might as well try to find the mother. Maybe she can tell us something.”

* * *

Kate and Will dismounted in front of a one-room cabin in the middle of the woods but before either of them had taken a step away from their horse the front door slammed open with an bang and a woman came out pointing a gun at them. She had blood down the front of her dress and stripes of clean skin across her face and chest where she had tried to wipe away the blood. “Who are you?”

“I’m Will Pinkerton, this is Kate Warne. We’re with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. We just want to talk.”

“Are you here about Arthur? I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill him,” she said, never lowering the gun. 

“Then you saw what happened?” Kate asked.

The wild look faded from her eyes and was replaced by something distant and scared. The pain that took up residence on her face was something much more attached than just a sister-in-law. Kate watched closely to the way that the gun started to drift lower as she went further into her trance. With suddenly clarity Kate realized why the look was so familiar, it was one that she had felt on her own face countless times. The realization that the person you loved was gone.

Kate looked at Will who had one hand resting on the butt of his holstered gun. She wanted to reach over to Will and tell him, to explain that this woman was not their killer, but the half step she made brought the woman back from Arthur’s deathbed. 

“I believe you. You didn’t do it.”

Instead of making an answer Martha Melton turned around and went into the cabin, waving them to follow her. Inside a wood stove burned hot and Martha sat on the edge of the bed that was pushed up against one wall. Will and Kate pressed close to each other on the small bench that was in front of the stove and faced Martha. “Do people think I did it?”

“No one knew about it when we left to go see your son.”

“As soon as they do they will.” She didn’t look particularly upset by that admission, just resided to the accusation of murder.

“Why?”

“I thought everyone in Kansans City knew,” she said with a wry smile that seemed to pain her. “After my husband Robert died in the War Arthur said he would help and any way he could and I let him. Robert and I had helped him when his SoulMate died from consumption so I thought that he owed me. I’m not proud of that. It was hard without Robert and I had to mortgage the farm. Arthur was helping us make the payments some times, and helping with the kids. We spent so much time together and without meaning to…”

“You fell in love,” Kate finished when she trailed off.

She nodded and tried to hide the welling tears. “I couldn’t have hurt him, you have to believe me.”

“If you didn’t do it, why are you out here?” Will asked.

Her lips twisted into a bitter frown almost identical to the one that her son had had when he spoke of Arthur. “People don’t like it when you fall for someone after your SoulMate. They didn’t like us being together. They will have think I did it and I can’t go to jail and leave my kids alone. I was going to wait until it blew over.”

“Murder doesn’t just blow over,” Kate said.

“And you’ve left your children alone right now,” Will said.

“The boys can handle it for now. And people will forget and move on. Until then I can’t exactly go through town to get home with people accusing me of murder.”

“No one is accusing you of murder,” Will argued. 

“You thought I did it enough to go see my children.”

“That’s because your daughter Clarissa walked to town to hire us to find you,” Will said with barely contained anger.

“Martha,” Kate interrupted before the two could go any farther into an argument. “We can get you back to the farm.”

“And find Arthur’s killer?”

“We can’t promise that.”

She sighed. “I suppose I never put much faith in promises anyway.”

* * *

After leaving the cabin Will and Kate decided to go back to town until the sun went down and they could sneak Martha through easier. They went directly to the Dubois to find something to put in Will’s stomach as he had whined the whole way back to town about Kate pulling him into a case, an unpaid case at that, before he could finish his lunch. Annalee brought him a fresh bowl of stew, which he quickly scarfed down and then asked for seconds, charging to Kate’s tab. 

“I don’t know why she puts up with you,” Annalee said as she sat down the second bowl in front of him.

“It’s my dashing good looks.” Will grinned at them both. Annalee rolled his eyes but still smiled, and Kate gave him a smirk.

“It might be if you had any,” Kate shot back, suppressing a laugh at the wounded look on Will’s face.

He had come to have that effect on her, making her laugh and joke even when she didn’t want to. What Martha Melton had said about falling in love after her SoulMate had stuck with her and she couldn’t shake the feeling that had rooted itself deep inside of her, like something obvious was in front of her that she couldn’t quite make out.

Will must have noticed that she was lost in thought because he asked what she was thinking. 

“Even if she didn’t do it that still leaves Jonathan.”

“With that Clarissa in the family I imagine it’s hard to sneak away unnoticed to commit murder.”

“True. We should check to see if Logan had any luck while we were gone.”

Will nodded, but looked back at his stew and kept eating. 

They were in agreement. They would go talk to Logan, but not before Will finished eating. 

In the Sheriff’s office the first thing either of them noticed was the large muscled man sulking in the cell, sitting with his back against the wall, thick arms crossed, and legs kicked out in front of him.

“Well if it isn’t the Pinkertons,” Logan said with a grin that the agents most associated with when he won a game of cards during a night off.

“I see you have a guest, Sheriff,” Will said, motioning to the cell. “Should we come back later?”

“Now Will, there’s no reason to pout just because I did your job for you.” The grin spread wider as he spoke until it showed all his teeth and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “He’s your guy.”

“Who exactly is _he_?” Kate asked focusing on the gigantic man who was wearing a plain shirt that was obviously too small to be his, with his ungrounded face and pants with holes in the knees, though the pants looked freshly dyed.

“This is Walter Smith. Tell them what you did, Walter.”

“I ain’t no monkey to dance whenever you like,” Walter spat at them.

The sharp response didn’t diminish Logan’s good mood in the slightest. “Then I’ll tell them. The great brute over there and a couple of his bodies robbed a train a few years back and Metlton was his lawyer. Melton lost Smith went to jail.”

“So Smith broke out and killed Melton?”  
“Bastard had it coming,” Smith said.

“How’d you find him so quickly? We were only gone a few hours,” Kate asked

“You act like I never solved a murder before you came here,” Logan said, indignant for a moment. Under Kate’s scrutiny though he sighed. “He tried to cash some checks at the bank. Kemble sent someone to get me when the signatures didn’t match.

Will threw his head back in a laugh. “It’s so nice when they make it easy on us.”

Logan laughed with him, the grin returning to his face.

Kate glanced out the window and saw that dusk was coming fast. “Since the Sheriff here has it under control we should get going, Will.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you two around,” Logan said, waving them away. 

Outside the pair started to where they had left their horses at the Dubois. “At least it wasn’t Jonathan.”

“I don’t think the Meltons could have taken that,” Will said, his voice carefully void. He was more relieved than he wanted to let on to Kate. She hated when he got emotionally vested in cases, but he was really rooting for Martha. Love was real outside of SoulMates and she proved it. 

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Kate asked, stopping in the street to turn to him.

“I wasn’t looking at you,” Will said, continuing past her, focused on not blushing.

“Yes, you were,” Kate argued as she ran to catch up with him.

“You’re seeing things.” 

“I am not.”

“Whatever you say.” Will still got the horses first and rode off in front of her, looking back at her with a grin. She had to fight against the grin that was bubbling up at the challenge to chase him. She lost that battle, but she did win the race to the cabin.

Martha greeted her outside of the house again, this time with a lamp instead of a gun. “Thought you two might have forgotten about me,” she said to Kate. 

“We got caught up at the Sheriff’s office,” Kate explained. “They’ve caught Arthur’s killer.”

“Oh, thank the Lord,” Martha said, clutching at her heart. “Who was it?”

“A past client,” Kate said. She looked back down the path and didn’t see Will yet, she hadn’t left him far behind, but she had the feeling that he was purposefully making her wait. At least she had some time to talk to Martha. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” 

“How did you fall in love with Arthur?” 

“You mean when he wasn’t my SoulMate?”

Kate nodded.

“People who haven’t lost their SoulMate don’t understand I think what let me try again was that a SoulMate wouldn’t want you to be alone forever. At least not my Robert. Why do you ask? It’s not like you have to worry about it.” 

For a second Kate could only look bewildered at her. She could hear Will coming down the path and he would be there in just a few moments but she couldn’t help the almost shout that came out of her mouth when she realized what Martha had been getting at. “Oh Will’s not…” 

“Will’s not what?” he asked, coming to a stop behind her.

Kate whirled around. “What? Nothing.”

Will started at her for a second before shrugging and getting down to stand with them. 

Martha looked between them and then laughed loudly.

“Anyone want to tell me what I missed?”

Martha and Kate both answered negatively.

“Okay. I take it you haven’t told her the plan yet either.”

“You wanted to.”

Will shook his head and started to explain that since they had caught the killer he was just going to take her back through town and to the farm on his horse. Kate would take the back way from there to her house. Martha thanked them for the escort, though there was still a faint hint of worry on her features, to calm her nerves Kate gave her her hat and said that no one would question Kate and Will riding through town together. A relieved smile spread across Martha’s features and she went inside to put out and put away the lamp. 

When she came back out of the house she went directly to Kate and wrapped her in a hug. In her ear she whispered, ”Whoever he was, he’d want you to be happy.” She pulled away and smiled. Kate only stared with eyes wide and jaw slack. “Should we go?” Martha asked. 

Will nodded, but hesitated with his eyes on Kate if only for second, looking like he wanted to say something in the moonlight. Kate didn’t look at him and he went without speaking.

Kate watched them ride away and waited for a while, the whole time forcing herself to think about anything but Martha and what she had said. She was still on a case. She couldn’t think about foolish things like love.

There hoof beats had faded for a while Kate followed the path out of the forest and quickly rode home, forcing herself to think about navigating and not about the name on her wrist.

Finally back in the safety of her home Kate let her guard down but instead of thoughts of Joshua coming to her they were thoughts of Will.

Will standing with her even when it wasn’t his fight.

Kate _wanting_ to stand by him.

Will always protecting her, or at least trying.

Kate _trying_ to protect him even when he didn’t want it.

Will joking and laughing. 

Kate having to stop herself from glaring at anyone he flirted with.

Kate groaned audibly. She knew Josh would have wanted her to be happy but why did it have to be Will? Being a Pinkerton was everything to her and she couldn’t sacrifice that for a schoolgirl dream of happily ever after.

Once her resolve was set to fall no further for William Pinkerton she decided that she deserved another cup of tea and one of the cookies from the jar next to stove. She munched on the cookie as she waited for the water to boil and all was quiet an peaceful.

Right up to the moment when someone knocked on her front door. Kate stared at the door for a moment, she considered just ignoring it but instead she grabbed the gun that was hidden behind the couch and aimed it at the door and outside as she swung the door open. 

Will’s hands shot up, her hat clutched in one of them.

“What are you doing here?”

“Bringing you hat back,” he said, tossing it to her. She caught it in the hand that wasn’t holding the gun, shaking her head at him. 

She went back into the house and stashed the gun away again in silent invitation to enter. “That couldn’t have waited until morning?” In the kitchen the water started to boil and she went to go make them both tea while Will stayed in the living room. She should have just gone to bed, she thought to herself.

“It could have, but you seemed upset so I figured I’d make sure you were okay.”

Kate couldn’t see him from her kitchen but she could hear the soft scraping of his foot swinging back and forth across her floor. In her mind she could imagine the blush half from the cold, half not, and his hands in his pockets.

“That I was okay?” she asked because she just couldn’t help herself. 

“Like not coming down with a cold or something.”

Kate came around the corner with the two cups and found Will just as she had imagined. She took a moment to think about her response while they took the first sips. “You don’t have a SoulMate, do you?”

Will looked a little shocked, like he had expected her to tell him that she was fine and that he could leave. Maybe that’s what he had been expecting. “I don’t. Guess that just means I’m perfect all by myself.” He laughed but it sounded hollow to Kate’s ears, and from the look in his eyes it had sounded the same to him.

“Without a SoulMate you might not understand, but I asked her how she could love someone who wasn’t her SoulMate.”

“And?”

“She said that she decided that her SoulMate wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.” Kate found herself holding her breath waiting for Will to say something, but he had the same look on his face when they had left Logan’s. The one she couldn’t place.

He reached out and gently grabbed her arm. He probably didn’t even know that his fingers had settled half on her SoulMark but it made her breath catch. “If he was half the man you deserve then he would want you to be happy. No matter how.” Then quickly, as if her arm had burned him, he withdrew.

Kate was almost as surprised as Will when she said, “What about you?”

“Of course I want you to be happy,” Will answered so quickly it was obviously a kneejerk response. The idea of him wanting her to be anything other than happy was unthinkable. 

“It wouldn’t ruin our partnership?”

Will’s laugh this time wasn’t hollow, but it was bitterness, not humor that filled it. “If either of us is going to ruin our partnership over love it’s me.”

“You think I don’t want you to be happy?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Will’s eyes went wide and his jaw fell slack with the realization of what he had said. His chair scrapped back with loudly as he stood. “Nothing. Thank you for the tea.”

“Will, stop,” Kate said, standing and grabbing for his wrist. “What did you mean?”

He wouldn’t turn around and look at her and it scared her.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Will!”

“Fine!” he yelled. As fast as she had ever seen him move he turned around, grabbed the sides of her face, and pressed their lips together. The press of lips was hard and unmoving, but also undemanding. It felt like pure desire was being loosed on her that had been bottled for too long. Kate was so shocked that she couldn’t move but she swore that he was trembling. 

He pulled away and his eyes were still closed for a second longer, preserving the moment. Then he opened his eyes and his voice cracked when he spoke. “That’s what it meant.”

By the time Kate actually pulled herself together he was out the door and working on undoing the knock that he had used to secure the bridle. He was loosing the fight with shaking hands. 

“Will, I…” she started only to be interrupted.

“Kate. I will apologize tomorrow and you can request the transfer tomorrow or I will whatever you want but right now I need to get home. Can I have just _one_ night to hate myself before you tell me you hate me too? Please.” He didn’t dare look at her through his whole speech and he was too distracted by his inner turmoil from loosing his best friend to notice her moving from the door and down the steps to stand behind him.

“You do not get to hate yourself,” she said and then turned him around and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck to stop him from running away. 

The kiss was softer this time, the desperation was coming from her and she could actually appreciate the moment for what it was. His face was wet with tears and his beard scratched at her face. She could taste the tea on his lips, and a lingering of whiskey that me must have had right before he came into the farmhouse. There was also something else that she couldn’t quite place, something that was just Will.

When they broke apart Will rested his forehead against hers. “Really?”

“Really.”

Slowly, hopefully, he wrapped his harms around her waist. “You’re sure?” 

“Allen is going to kill me but yes.”

Will threw his head back laughing, tightening his arms and pulling her closer. “He’s more likely to fire me for corrupting his best agent.” 

She laughed and he leaned down kissing her again, simply because he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So, I'm a little rusty in the world of fanfics so please be gentle with me. This is my obligatory soulmates fic. Please don't judge me.


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